Free Republic

On Friday, every political campaign had to file its 2013 year end report with the FEC. The reports delivered two big surprises. The Democrats are dominating the Republicans in fundraising. More surprising, perhaps, though, is that Tea Party and conservative SuperPACs raised around three times as much as GOP establishment SuperPACs. The DC GOP may have started the war against the Tea Party, but it won't finish it. Not long after their stunning losses in 2012, Karl Rove and other establishment Republicans announced a new effort to engage in primaries to ensure the "right" candidates got the party's nomination. Rove...

After wasting nearly $325 million during the 2012 election cycle with nothing to show for it and then declaring war on the Tea Party, donations to Karl Rove's three Crossroads groups decreased by 98% last year. The groups reportedly raised a paltry $6.1 million combined in 2013. .... Since then, as Breitbart News reported, "Rove’s organization has been so tarnished among the conservative base that candidates fear donors will not contribute to any group associated with him." Aware of this, Rove's Crossroads network has reloaded with groups that share donors but are technically not affiliated on paper with them.

On Election Night 2012, Democrats had more than the reelection of President Obama to celebrate. Karl Rove, the mastermind Republican strategist hated and feared by Democrats, had a meltdown live on Fox News. A new documentary, "Mitt," Greg Whiteley's film of Mitt Romney and his family during his 2008 and 2012 presidential bids, released on Netflix on Friday, sheds more light on that bizarre incident. Rove's famous hissy-fit took place when the network called the state of Ohio for Obama, putting the president over the 270 electoral votes needed to win reelection. Rove argued that Fox's analysts had acted prematurely.

Conservative iconoclast M. Stanton Evans once aptly remarked that in America: "We have two parties... and only two. One is the evil party, and the other is the stupid party." The evil party gave us ObamaCare, an imperial judiciary and the public morality of a Babylonian brothel. The stupid party gave us Karl Rove. On January 15, The Wall Street Journal ran a Rove commentary, the title of which proclaimed, "Independents Will Decide the 2014 Elections: Debunking the myth that turning out the base alone is enough to win." Republican consultants are the only group whose failures bring them business...

What if conservative FReepers/bloggers/online activists were to instigate a boycott of major donors to Karl Rove's 'American Crossroads' and 'Crossroads GPS' SuperPACs- so that underwriting Rove's war on the Gee-Oh-Pee's own base comes at as heavy a price as possible? Then perhaps they'll realize what they're doing is wrong.   Crossroads GPS is a 'dark money' PAC -thus not required to release donor info- but we've got enough on the original American Crossroads group to make our presence felt (via pain inflicted) while we try and sniff-out the rest. Karl Rove and his congressional allies need to be taken-out-at-the-knees...

The pundit class and the GOP establishment currently are engaged in massive "concern trolling" over the possibility that Republican voters will elect conservatives in party primaries. Karl Rove, the US Chamber of Commerce and other special interests have vowed to spend whatever it takes to prevent citizens from nominating the "wrong" candidates. Setting aside the conceit that these interests know better than voters who should represent them, are these concerns even valid? The establishment's argument is based on three things: 1) Rep. Todd Akin (MO), 2) Sharron Angle (NV), and 3) Christine O'Donnell (DE). Granted, these campaigns were train wrecks,...

WASHINGTON — In the year since he stepped down from Congress, Steven C. LaTourette, a Republican from Ohio, has emerged as one of the top generals in the establishment Republicans’ war against the Tea Party. It is a role that has benefited the Main Street Partnership, a corporate-backed advocacy group he runs, and its effort to raise millions of dollars to protect centrist Republicans from Tea Party challengers. It has also helped draw clients to a separate lobbying office Mr. LaTourette and his wife have set up across the street from the Capitol. But this blitz of activity has led...

In a column on the “remarkable lives” of some people who passed away in 2013, Republican strategist Karl Rove writes that British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, in concert with Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and Pope John Paul II, “transformed the world.” He’s right that Reagan, Bush, Thatcher and the Pope did transform the world. In saying that Thatcher stood up to Soviet communism, however, he neglected to mention that the Soviet Communists fought back, attempting to assassinate Pope John Paul II. The Soviets lied about their involvement in this plot. Referring to Nelson Mandela, Rove says he...

For any with lingering doubts as to the righteousness of Karl Rove's intentions as he declares out-and-out war on the TEA Party, just have a look at the sorts he's associating himself with... Rove's dark-money SuperPACs like American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS were always funded  by billionaires with crony capitalism, cheap money, and an open-borders bottomless labor supply at the top of their agenda. These are mostly people of little constitutional sensibility, not particularly patriotic (in actions), and nor are they interested in true fiscal reform. The anti-TEA Party RINO establishment they support generously has dubbed itself 'the governing wing' of the GOP...

And that's just fine- no time like the present for that inevitable defining battle with the wretched political-consultant class that has driven the GOP over the cliff for going-on eight years now. The victors in this power struggle (my $ says constitutional conservatives) will have momentum into the 2014 elections, with time to consolidate Republican power and roll Hillary to the curb in 2016. The only reason the unloved RINO racket Rove operates is even still around is the mechanism they've established that draws large corporate (and other special interest) donations, then utilizes that mountain of cash to control incumbents/primaries/elections and line-the-pockets...

A quiet but intense struggle over money and influence is roiling the Republican Party just as the 2014 election season is getting underway. At least a dozen “super PACs” are setting up to back individual Republican candidates for the United States Senate, challenging the strategic and financial dominance that Karl Rove and the group he co-founded, American Crossroads, have enjoyed ever since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010 cleared the way for unlimited independent spending. In wooing donors, the new groups — in states like Texas, Iowa, West Virginia and Louisiana — are exploiting Crossroads’ poor showing in...

In response to the news that Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS is funding Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) to the tune of $26 million in 2012, Tea Party Patriots National Coordinator Jenny Beth Martin told Breitbart News that Rove cannot buy his way into the conservative movement. “The old adage 'keep your friends close and your enemies closer' is more relevant in today’s political arena than ever before,” Martin said. “It is not surprising that there are groups we thought were in this fight with us have been shown to have ulterior motives."

-snip- Ball quotes two different pro-amnesty activists as part of the plan pushing for revenge: Frank Sharry of America’s Voice and Joshua Culling of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), Grover Norquist’s outfit. -snip- Ball described Culling as a “conservative,” even though it was just discovered the outfit he works for, ATR, is funded largely by Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS. According to tax documents released by Crossroads, Rove’s group gave ATR $26 million in 2012. Rove is actively working against conservatives nationwide in an effort to stop the Tea Party movement. His funding of Norquist’s organization--which has supported amnesty and publicly...

Tax documents from Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS show that Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) is largely funded by Rove, ProPublica’s Kim Barker reports. -snip- On its 2012 tax return, Barker reported, the biggest grant Rove’s Crossroads GPS gave to anybody was a $26.4 million grant it gave to Norquist’s ATR for “social welfare.” -snip- ATR spokesman John Kartch and Rove spokesman Jonathan Collegio both declined to answer specific questions from ProPublica about the grant.

Republican political strategist Karl Rove accused the Obama administration of "hypocrisy" Wednesday, charging that a proposed change in IRS rules regarding nonprofit organizations is aimed at gagging conservative activists. "This is clearly an attempt by the administration to discourage conservative groups," the former deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush said on "Fox & Friends." "I think it's hypocrisy," he said.

-snip- According to writers Steve Peoples and Thomas Beaumont, “Groups such as American Crossroads [run by Karl Rove] and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce no longer are willing to risk major investments on hard-line conservatives who embarrassed GOP leaders last fall and rattled the confidence of party donors. Many remain concerned after last month's government shutdown highlighted Republican divisions.” Jonathan Collegio, a spokesman for Rove’s Super PAC American Crossroads, told Peoples and Beaumont that the reason is, "Unlike previous cycles, we won't be sending good money after substandard candidates with weak campaigns." This is pure B.S. – the big business-oriented...

Am I the only one who caught it? Some of you clever techies post that for us please.

Leaders of the Republican establishment, alarmed by the emergence of far-right and often unpredictable Tea Party candidates, are pushing their party to rethink how it chooses nominees and advocating changes they say would result in the selection of less extreme contenders. The push comes as the national Republican Party is grappling with vexing divisions over its identity and image, and mainstream leaders complain that more ideologically-driven conservatives are damaging the party with tactics like the government shutdown. The debate intensified on Wednesday after Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, the deeply conservative Republican candidate for governor of Virginia, lost a close race...

Leave it to Mark Levin to say exactly what many conservatives have believed but not said. The RINO wing of the GOP — and Karl Rove specifically — do not want a Ken Cuccinnelli victory in Virginia.